Isa Leshko ❌👑

Trump’s War on Big Law Means It’s Harder to Challenge the Administration Some of America’s largest law firms are refusing to take pro bono and paid legal work from groups that seek to hold the government to account on issues like environmental protection, LGBTQ+ rights and...

“That’s the environment," said a Big Law partner, on the pro bono chill. "What’s become radioactive has grown from a very small number of things to anything this administration and Trump might notice and get angry about.” ProPublica reports on the lasting impact of the law firm vengeance orders.

RFK Jr. pulls funding for vaccines being developed to fight respiratory viruses The projects — 22 of them — are being led by some of the nation’s leading pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna to prevent flu, COVID-19 and H5N1 infections.

Those mRNA vaccine programs that RFK Jr. is killing because he claims they don't work?
The people who invented them got the f***ing Nobel Prize.
And they've saved literally millions of lives already.

www.pbs.org/newshour/hea...

How much protesting have you actually done, Phillip? Why aren’t you protesting more?

There are nearly daily protests in my area. We certainly would love more people to join us, and we have been working on that. But we are resisting daily, and mobilizing.

Join us instead of skeeting.

Sigh.

Stopping vaccine development is another example of "eugenics is everywhere."

Expecting survival of the fittest when one gets infectious disease and cancer is eugenics.

RFK Jr. pulls $500 million in funding for vaccine development

Trump and RFK are slashing $500M in mRNA vaccine funding—jeopardizing lifesaving research.

We should be investing in pandemic preparedness, not gutting it.

This is reckless. This is dangerous. This will cost lives. We must fight back.

BREAKING NEWS: a government watchdog confirmed the Trump administration is breaking the law by blocking NIH funds.
 
How many kids with cancer or grandmas with Alzheimer’s have to get closer to death while crucial research is stalled? 

Trump must end this illegal funding freeze.

Seven suspected tuberculosis cases at Tacoma ICE processing facility The KING 5 Investigators discovered seven suspected cases of TB at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, confirmed by the Washington State Department of Health.

ICE detention facilities violate basic civil rights, but they also pose a threat to public health.

At least 7 confirmed cases of tuberculosis have been discovered at an ICE facility in Tacoma.

One of the confirmed cases had been transferred to Alaska, where the ACLU has reported 35 cases

White House Leads Push to Block Watchdog’s Inquiries Into Spending Cuts

The Impoundment Control Act authorizes the head of GAO to file a lawsuit if the agency finds the President illegally impounded funds (as it did here).

It has not yet done so, despite four findings of illegal impoundment this year.

Republicans are working to stop the GAO from doing so, NYT reports.

Department of Health and Human Services—National Institutes of Health—Application of Impoundment Control Act to Availability of Funds for Grants Congress appropriated amounts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to carry out various research objectives for fiscal year 2025. In accordance...

BREAKING: Watchdog government agency finds the NIH and the Trump administration have illegally withheld funds in violation of the Impoundment Control Act, and rips into HHS for failing to justify its slow-walking of funds.

www.gao.gov/products/b-3...

A wasteland of rubble, dust and graves: how Gaza looks from the sky The Guardian joins a Jordanian military airdrop for a rare chance to observe a landscape devastated by Israel’s offensive

"Its markets were crowded, its streets were full of children. That Gaza is gone— not buried under volcanic ash, not erased by history, but razed by an Israeli military campaign that has left behind a place that looks like the aftermath of an apocalypse"

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Public Health Success Is Fragile - The Return Of Measles Is Proof Measles is surging and vaccine hesitancy is up. In his book "Booster Shots," Dr Adam Ratner explains why measles is back and how we can control this deadly infectious killer.

When I was a medical resident in South India in the 1990s, I rarely saw kids with measles. And I did not see much of polio or diphtheria or whooping cough either. None of this was a matter of luck. It was because vaccination coverage in that region of India was high

www.forbes.com/sites/madhuk...

We will be incredibly screwed if #H5N1 does become a human-transmitted pandemic. This decision is so incredibly ignorant and dangerous.

Trump will no doubt fire the person responsible for this report.

Being a “law and order” governor does not mean you actually have to follow the law

🤦🏻‍♀️

Every Trump press conference is him suggesting crimes he might commit

reminder that in the old days "quotas" meant something different

Digital Necromancy in the Age of AI Thanks to advances in AI, we are no longer allowed to truly die. The peace of the grave and the finality that defines the human condition are all being sacrificed on the altar of artificial intelligen...

I wrote about the horrifying use of AI to resurrect the dead as hollow simulacrum puppeted by the living and why we should reject normalizing this as it dehumanizes the living and desecrates our humanity.

www.thedissident.news/digital-necr...

Tomorrow!!! Come out to Plymouth for the No Cookies for #Facists Bake Sale & Protest!

Starting in 10 minutes: a discussion on the current redistricting crisis in Texas.
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Despite his threats, Governor Abbott can’t remove lawmakers from office for protecting the right to vote.

I sent him a letter to remind him of what all Texans know: the Governor is not a king.

Read my full letter ⬇️

Texas Democrats are responding to historic anti-democratic norm-breaking with historic opposition.

This isn’t just about Texas. It’s about the survival (or lack thereof) of our democracy: www.bluestatedefiance.org/redistrictin...

Life on a Monday in August may seem normal enough. And yet the reality is "We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country." I so appreicate @maddow.msnbc.com describing the simple reality clearly. It does us no good to pretend it's not real. The only question is what we do about it.

👏🏻🙌🏻⛱️🕶️💪🏻

[ALT TEXT/IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A smiling woman with wavy brown hair and black glasses looks up at the camera. She wears a striped gray cardigan over an orange top and a heart-shaped necklace. The background is a dark blue square with bold white text reading: “VOTING RIGHTS and people with disabilities.” Below the text are three stars, the National Disability Rights Network logo, and the Fair Elections Center logo.]

Voting rights are disability rights.

Michelle Bishop, a national expert on accessible voting and civil rights policy, breaks down the unique challenges disabled voters face—and what needs to change.

Read more in her blog post with Fair Elections Center: fairelectionscenter.org/media/voting...

Y'know, at some point y'all are gonna have to chisel that poem off the base of that big ass statue, or at least cover the damn thing with a tarp. i mean jesus.

🧵👇🏻

Crockett: Listen, Donald Trump is a piece of shit—we know that. But in a functioning democracy, he still wouldn’t be able to get away with this. He’s been able to get away with it because Republicans are complicit and—most importantly—the Supreme Court is complicit.

Murphy: Kamala Harris ran a campaign asking people to defend democracy, when a lot of people looked at this version of democracy and said, if this is the version of democracy that you're defending, I don't want it. Democrats need to be for a version of democracy that’s clean and not corrupt